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Hickman to leave FF, Fantastic Four in October; then what?

Come October, writer Jonathan Hickman’s time with Marvel’s first family will run out.

In an interview with iFanboy from last weekend’s Image Expo, Hickman discusses not only his upcoming Image projects, but also his current Marvel ones. “I’m off of Fantastic Four at the end of the year…S.H.I.E.L.D. is wrapping up. I turned in my last issue of Ultimates last week,” he said. You can watch the full interview, conducted by Ron Richards, after the jump.

Hickman expands on the end of his Fantastic Four and FF runs in an interview with Marvel.com’s Ben Morse. “I always had an end point in mind, but along the way I really fell in love with writing Marvel’s First Family and I also had all these dangling bits to clean up, so I agreed—[and] wanted—to stay on,” Hickman said. “Then all the gears started turning on all the [Avengers Vs. X-Men] stuff and what comes after and it just became obvious that October would be a good time to hop off.”

Hickman’s run on the title, which eventually led to the launch of its sister title, FF, began with issue #570. His last issues of Fantastic Four and FF will be issues #611 and #23.

Marvel’s senior vice president of publishing, Tom Brevoort, told our own Tim O’Shea earlier this year that when he was looking for a new writer for the title back in 2009, he was looking to bring “a younger voice into the mix” to follow writers like Mark Millar, JMS and Dwayne McDuffie. “…I wanted to bring in somebody who would have something new to say, and who maybe wouldn’t be as shackled in his thinking to the past. At the same time, I wanted to maintain the overall positive/optimistic flavor that the series has always had when it’s been really clicking, in my opinion. Given those parameters, it didn’t take me long to start speaking with Jonathan Hickman, with whom I was working on Secret Warriors at the time. Jonathan went away, pulled together his ideas, and came back with a strong pitch for the series—and away we went!”

No word yet on who will replace him or where he might go to next in the Marvel Universe, but with the news that Brian Michael Bendis is leaving the Avengers titles later this year, Richards speculated at iFanboy that perhaps a run on Avengers is in his future. Where do you think he’ll end up, and more importantly, where would you like to see him?